Jakub Wilk <jwilk@debian.org> writes:
> Dmitrijs Ledkovs wrote on his blog[0]:
>
>> Generally if software is useful in Debian Project it can be useful
>> for other debian-like and unlike projects. In particular native
>> packages do not offer the same patching flexibility as 3.0 (quilt),
>> thus forcing downstream distributions to inline modify packages
>> without DEP-3
>> headers. This hurts us, when trying to merge useful stuff from
>> derivatives back into Debian, as changes are not split into
>> individual patches.
>
> I would tend to agree that we have too many native packages, though I
> doubt you'll find (m)any supporters of the idea of banning them
> completely.
There are two native packages I maintain, and I've yet to hear a good
reason for making either of them non-native. Making it harder and much
much more inconvenient for downstream distributions to modify them is a
*goal* in these cases: to make it harder to diverge from one
another.
As for no DEP-3? I do sincerely hope that by 2013, everyone's using a
VCS, and we can pick patches from there.
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